What are your favourite vegetables in spring/summer? I am going to bundle both seasons in together as we seem to have missed spring and summer is just around the corner.

The Garden Share Collective is a group of gardeners who join each other every month to talk about their productive garden progress. You can join in from the last Monday of each month by linking up here on my post or via Rosehips and Rhubarb. This month’s them is “Favourite”.

Spring has been off to an odd start, with just one month to go it feels like it has not actually arrived yet. With lots of rain and mostly cool days, it feels like winter has remained. As a result many of my favourite summer plants are yet to get a kick start in the garden. They have been slowly developing but are yet to find their place in the garden.

One of the the main pieces of advice I consistently give people just beginning to grow fresh food is grow things they like to eat. Start with plants you know your children will enjoy harvesting and eating after they have grown them.  This selection of plants can widen once you get into the swing of things.

For our family, tomatoes are the thing I most look forward to adding to the garden at this time of year. Unfortunately this year the small number of summer seedlings I have added to the garden have been harassed by the snails and slater bugs so I am cautiously waiting to see what I will end up with.  I enjoy trying multiple varieties each year, fitting in as many plants as possible. This year I have an oversupply of three varieties I grew from seed for a large event. There were over 100 plants left at the end of the event so I fear the variety in the garden this year will be limited to these and what ever pops up from the compost.

While tomatoes are a favourite, the whole range of summer plants are hard to beat, I also really enjoy freshly picked corn, capsicum, cucumber and eggplant.  It is my favourite season of the year. Last year I added up the amount of produce we were harvesting each day and it was a wonderful saving – both of money and time as I rarely shopped for any additions for dinner. It equated to $240 a month. You can read about it here.

Can you tell I am looking forward to summer? It hasn’t even started yet, and I am there in my mind. We have  a month of Spring to get through yet. Spring favourites are most certainly rocket and coriander. I get as many harvests as possible during this period before the heat sends them to flower. I have  few coriander plants that are planted in the semi shade, protected by larger plants and they have performed the best.

The garden comes alive in Spring, filling out, bursting into flower and generally looking beautifully lush and healthy.

In my garden this month I have been focusing on planting seeds, tidying up and pulling out things that are going to seed – such as parsley. I’ve been walking around, and around and around the garden planning what will go in each bed this year and making space for summer seedlings to go in.

The fruit trees have all burst into blossom and most are starting to form fruit. The apricot is well and truly ahead of the pack with full branches of fruit that will need to have some thinning as the tree is still quite small.

Planting this month:

• Basil
• Beans
• Capsicum
• Chilli
• Cucumber
• Corn
• Eggplant
• Lettuce
• Pumpkin
• Rocket
• Tomatoes
• Zucchini

Harvesting now:

• Beetroot
• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Fennel
• Herbs
• Lettuce
• Radicchio
• Rocket

In the garden now:

The activities I am doing in the garden at the moment, or am planning to do in the coming weeks include:

• Mulch (later in the month)
• Turn the compost each week
• Fertilise the fruit trees
• Keeping an eye on snails (ok, hunting snails)
• Thin out the apricot fruit and check on the other fruit tree progress.
• Remove the last of the winter plants
• Double check the seeds I have planted to make sure I’ve not forgotten any summer favourites

How is your garden going this month? Has the unstable spring weather impacted your planting?

What is your garden favourite?

Join in the Garden Share Collective and add your post below.